Wikimedia Commons
Postcard photo of the Denver and Rio Grande railroad depot in Colorado Springs, Colorado from the first part of the 1900s.
The following is part of KRCC s weekly Peak Past essay series.
Have you ever wondered how the West was won?
There’s really only one answer. By train.
Civilization rode the rails into the American West on an iron horse, for good and for ill. Everyone used to ride the train. A hundred years ago, and right up through World War II, it was the thing to do.
That is.until it wasn’t. In the 1960s, passenger rail all but died. In 1970, Penn Central, the largest railroad in the Northeast, approached bankruptcy and planned to discontinue 34 of its passenger trains. It threatened to cripple the economy.